Cagliostro! Cagliostro! I was pursued all the next day, and for weeks afterward, with visions of the enchanter. “Ah, wretched mask of Balsamo,” I said to myself, “why have you bewitched me thus with your false oleaginous smile?” I took to haunting the book-stalls and antiquarian shops of the Quai Voltaire, in the hope of picking up some old medallion or rare print of the arch-quack. The second-hand literature of the world may be found here. Amid the flotsam and jetsam of old books tossed upon this inhospitable shore of literary endeavor many a precious Elzevir or Aldus has been picked up. My labors were not in vain. I was fortunate in discovering a quaint little volume, the life of Cagliostro, translated from the Italian work printed under the auspices of the Apostolic Chamber, Rome, 1790. It was entitled _Vie de Joseph Balsamo, Connu Sous le Nom de Comte Cagliostro. Traduite d’après l’original italien, imprimé à la Chambre Apostolique; enrichie de Notes curieuses, et ornée de son Portrait. Paris et Strasbourg, 1791._ The frontispiece was an engraved portrait of Cagliostro. Yes, here {45} was the great magician staring at me from out the musty, faded pages of a quaint old chronicle. A world of cunning lay revealed in the depths of his bold, gleaming eyes. His thick lips wore a smile of Luciferian subtlety. Here, indeed, was a study for Lavater. Here was the biography of the famous sorcerer of the old régime, the prince of charlatans, who foretold the fall of the Bastille, the bosom friend of the Cardinal de Rohan, and founder of the Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry. Fascinated with the subject of magic and magicians, I visited the Bibliothèque Nationale and dipped into the literature on Cagliostro. Subsequently, at the British Museum, I examined the rare brochures and old files of the Courrier de l’Europe for information concerning the incomparable necromancer, who made use of hypnotism, and, like Mesmer, performed many strange feats of pseudo-magic, and made numerous cures of diseases which baffled the medicos of the time.[8] Goethe[9] and Catharine II. wrote plays about him; George Sand introduced him into her novel, “The Countess of Rudolstadt;” Alexander Dumas made him the hero of several romances; Scribe, St. Georges, and Adam in the year 1844 brought out “Cagliostro,” a comic opera in three acts, which was successfully performed at the Opéra Comique, Paris; Alexander Dumas _fils_ wrote a drama in five acts called “Joseph Balsamo” which was produced at the Odéon, March 18, 1878; and Thomas Carlyle philosophized concerning him. [8] “Der Gros-Cophta” (a comedy in five acts). _Goethe’s Werke_, vol. 18, Stuttgart, 1868. [9] A superb bibliography of Cagliostro is to be found in “Börsenblatt fürden deutschen Buchhandel,” 1904, Nos. 210–212, and 214 (Sept. 9–12, 14), pp. 7488–92, 7524–30, 7573–75. This publication is to be found in the Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.